The play is called Cake. The opening line – ‘I’m going to buy the ingredients today to make a cake’ – is followed by a discussion: chocolate, sponges and cheesecakes, flourless or not. It’s a perfect opening. Quippy and not thematically loaded, but it gives you an immediate impression of the two characters and sets up a lot of openings for recall later. But I start tapping my foot almost immediately, frustrated by the pace. The actors are lingering on lines, playing hard for laughs. A few times I stop and remind myself I don’t need to think like this anymore, imagining myself as one of these people who’re imagining themselves as others. Then I remember I can think like this because it’s inconsequential and fun to think about now that I’m not acting.
When Fergus finishes his wine, he bends down and takes the second glass, supposedly purchased for me.
‘I’m going to leave,’ I say to him as soon as the cast finish their bows. ‘I don’t want to get stuck talking to anyone.’
‘Yeah, good call,’ he says.
I was hoping that he wouldn’t follow me, but he does.
We wait for the train at Windsor station and discuss the show. I thought the script was brilliant. I almost gave it a standing ovation, which I never do. It was so good that, for the most part, I was distracted enough not to focus on how hot it was in there.
‘Seriously,’ I say, interrupting Fergus’s observation about how the play subverted the traditional coming-out narrative, ‘if it hadn’t been Morgan’s play, I would’ve totally zoned out. It’s like a furnace in there. They need aircon. It’s absurd.’ I wipe my hands under my armpits and then over my shirt.
‘I guess you must feel the heat a lot more now, right?’ he says as the train pulls in. He quickly glances at my stomach, then steps into the carriage.
I hesitate before following him, tempted to let the train leave without me. It’s late, though, and I don’t want to wait thirty minutes for the next one.
‘Seriously, though’ – he opens an abandoned newspaper on the seat across from him – ‘I would pay to see Tennessee Williams write a play with iPhones.’ He turns pages of the paper, skimming the contents but clearly not reading, like a teenager reads a paper in a play.
‘What do you mean I must feel the heat more now?’
It’s quiet for a few seconds. He’s still staring at the paper but is no longer turning pages. Supposedly reading something now.
‘Because you’re pregnant.’ He’s still not looking at me.
‘Who told you?’
‘Ah, I think it was Jack, who works with Sarah. He might have mentioned it.’ He frowns, like he’s trying to remember, then returns to the paper. ‘An article on the reef dying comes after a royal baby – thank God the newspapers are all going out of business.’ He tosses the paper on the seat across from him then finally meets my gaze, not even blinking. ‘Also, you’re pretty big already.’
‘You just said you knew because someone told you.’
‘But it didn’t surprise me when I found out, you know?’
I feel a tingling of dislike, like static. ‘So, I guess now you know why I really can’t get involved in anything.’
‘Yeah.’ He looks at me thoughtfully. ‘I mean, you shouldn’t need a reason, though, right? No means no, so you shouldn’t have to justify rejecting me.’
‘I know.’ I glance up and down the carriage. The one person without earphones has stopped texting and is now staring out the window. It’s dark outside so she’s actually staring at her own reflection and I figure she’s probably listening.
‘Look, I know you don’t want a relationship and that’s fine. I don’t see why you being pregnant means we can’t’ – he pauses for a moment – ‘have fun.’ He does a bit of a shrug, a bit of a smile, but not a complete one of either.
‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ My voice is small and strangled and I hate myself for it.
‘Okay. If you don’t want to, you don’t want to. But honestly, it’s fine. I’m not looking for a relationship either.’
When we get to Flinders Street I take the escalator to switch platforms for a train heading north. Fergus is right behind me, following me through the station like we’re in a bad movie.
‘Don’t you have another train to catch?’ I ask.
‘How are you going to get home?’
‘I’ll walk from the station.’
‘I think it’s safer if you don’t walk home alone.’
‘It’s a Sunday.’
‘It’s dark. I think you should get a tram.’
‘Okay, thanks for the advice.’ When I turn around, he walks into me. I stand my ground, as does he. We’re only inches apart. I hold his gaze for a few seconds. When I turn away, I don’t say goodnight, not even goodbye.
I STAND ON the tram for the entire trip home, gripping the ceiling handles hard. A few times I switch ends, marching along the carriage. I have the urge to spit on the ground. I contemplate getting off a few stops early so that I can. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. If it’s him, I think, I’m going to block his number. It’s not. It’s a message from a friend I met through Annie, congratulating me, she’s just heard. A string of x’s at the end of the text. I send back a quick thank you and then I open Fergus’s contact. I pause on it for some time before I block it. I place a hand on my abdomen and breathe, in for three, out for three. My breaths grow louder and harsher as my stop never arrives. I’m as relaxed as a woman in a movie breathing her way through labour.
FOUR DAYS LATER I get a message from him on Facebook. He must’ve realised I blocked his number.
I’m sorry I acted like a dick. To be honest, I’ve had a crush on you for ages. Ever since I first saw you act. I was super keen when we hooked up, but could tell you were always holding back a bit. When I found out you were pregnant this made sense and I was upset and pissed off and took that out on you. I was trying to save face and in doing that I ended up being an arsehole. I hope we can be friends, but if you don’t want to that’s also fair. I really hope it works out for you. You’ll be a great mum.
I read it only once then I block him on Facebook.
I TOLD A PSYCHOLOGIST ONCE that I had almost killed myself in the week before our appointment, which was most definitely not true. More truthful would’ve been to say that it crossed my mind. Suicide crossed my mind, but not the intention to actually do it. It was more that I realised I could do it. I realised I could do it and that moment coincided with a moment of total despair. I was driving home from a work event. One of the parties the theatre companies throw for philanthropists that the actors are forced to attend to suck up to the donors, by allowing the donors to suck up to us. Elitists I didn’t know told me stories about actors more famous than me that they’d met at similar events. I shouldn’t have been drinking but I was bored out of my mind and trays of champagne kept going by. At the end of the night, as we were leaving, the philanthropists had just sat down for their meal. Their tables were set up on the stage. The person hosting the event began with an anecdote about the stage, how it was the largest in the southern hemisphere. So large you could fit twenty houses on it. Everyone looked around the space. Then the host added, Obviously not a house that any of us would live in, and they all laughed. I wasn’t plastered, but I was too wobbly to drive. In the car I was hysterical, crying and gripping the steering wheel. The road ahead blurred. It was late and there were long-haul trucks in lanes either side and for a moment I thought I’d swerved too close to one. The next moment I was thinking that I could swerve into the next lane, give my understudy a chance to shine.
WHEN PATIENTS SAY they are suicidal, psychologists ask them how they would plan to do it. The more thought out the plan, the more serious the case. The psychologist clarified to me that mine had been an opportunistic thought, not a plan.
I knew a girl who was so depressed, so certain she might kill herself, that she took herself to emergency and told them she needed to be admitted. The staff asked her what her plan was, how she was going to
do it. When she told them that she hadn’t got that far, since she’d decided to admit herself to hospital instead, they sent her home. Not at risk, they said. At home later she swallowed five times the recommended dose of sleeping pills.
I’ve only known a few other people who did what you did and all of them were adults and I didn’t really know any of them, not properly. They were parents of people I knew.
A girl I went to high school with was pulled out of class by the school receptionist. The receptionist did a terrible job of concealing that it was serious. ‘Bring your books with you, lovey, you won’t be coming back.’ The girl did come back the next term, but she was different. There was a sadness oozing out of her. By year ten she was having a lot of sex on the steps behind the science block. That’s the only other thing I remember about her. And that she ended up with a top mark at the end of year twelve. I don’t know anything about her father except for how he died.
There was the mother of another person from high school, but it happened a few years after we’d left, when the guy was in his twenties. I remember thinking this was less sad. He was an adult. He didn’t need a parent as much as a fourteen-year-old did. Then I decided it was far sadder. She was about to retire. Imagine working forever and then nothing.
Another friend’s father. Someone I studied acting with. His father had bipolar disorder at a time when mental illness was not considered a real illness. The only treatment for his condition, according to his son, was alcoholism. ‘I’m glad it’s over,’ my friend said. ‘He was a vicious man.’ This was a far sadder story – both for my friend, who had been put down and threatened for his entire childhood, and for the man himself.
Suicide was said to be common in our parents’ generation because people didn’t take mental health seriously. Men were meant to be men, which meant not crying, and women were meant to be in the kitchen, but also in the workplace, but being paid less. Depression was not a disease, not a real one.
It’s said to be worse in young people now because of the internet. Because of cyberbullying and always comparing our lives with other, better lives on Instagram.
A lot of older men did it after returning from war. Nobody talked about PTSD back then. We say this now as though the fact that we talk about it today stops it from happening, which we know it doesn’t.
Apparently people are sadder now than ever before.
A friend of mine once went on a date with a girl who started taking her medication while sitting across from him at a bar. She took so many pills she carried a first-aid kit with her. She unrolled it at the table and told him about her different afflictions, all mental. He told me this story when I asked him why he wasn’t going to see her again. It was evidence she wasn’t someone to get involved with.
SOMETIMES I WONDER what would’ve happened if I had told you any of these things. I’m addicted to the fantasy that if we’d got on to the topic of suicide I could’ve stopped you. Even though I know that it is just that – a fantasy. Even if I could’ve stopped you, it’s not what happened.
I GET MORE AND MORE tired and eventually I find out I’m low in iron. ‘I’ve been a vegetarian for a decade,’ I tell the midwife over the phone.
‘Have you been craving meat?’
‘No.’ It’s a lie. I’m craving dim sims. I have no memory of ever having eaten one and yet I imagine exactly what they taste like, salty and fatty. I dream of lashings of soy sauce.
‘Often the body will crave what it needs.’
‘That’s stupid. I can’t eat salami. I can’t eat any of the good meats, anyway.’ I sound like Sarah. I don’t even like salami. Or at least I don’t remember if I do.
‘If you’re serious about not eating meat there are other iron-rich foods. You need to eat a lot, though, which shouldn’t be hard.’ I hear her voice soften a little over the phone. ‘And, look, being low in iron isn’t that big a risk to the baby – though it can mean the baby is born underweight.’
‘So, it’ll be easy to push out?’ I expect to be scolded for this, but she laughs. There’s a sense of camaraderie I’ve not felt with a health professional before.
‘Underweight babies do face certain risks. But, mostly, getting more iron is for your benefit.’
She takes my email and sends me links to websites with information about iron deficiency during pregnancy. I glance at the information – lists of iron-rich foods and risks for underweight babies.
‘This is probably why you’re exhausted all the time. You have the rest of your life to be a vegetarian. Being pregnant is hard, so go easy on yourself.’
Before we hang up, I ask if I need to come into the hospital again. She answers ‘no’ with an efficiency that could make me feel relief, that could suggest this really isn’t a very big deal, but instead makes me feel like there are far too many babies being born for the hospital to really care for all of us enough.
‘There’s no major reason for concern. You’re fit and healthy.’ She finishes the call with, ‘You’ll be fine.’
I want to say, But the father killed himself. But of course I don’t.
IN BED AT night I think about dim sims until it becomes too painful. I put Friends on, distracting myself until finally I fade off. I wake to pee at 3 a.m. then I can’t get back to sleep. I can taste soy sauce in my saliva. I get out of bed and pull on some clothes from the floor. I’m careful not to wake Sarah as I close the front door gently behind me.
It’s a warm night; there are insects congregating around a street-light and the sound of crickets. I start my car and drive – slowly, as though I’m trying not to wake my neighbours – a kilometre down the road to the open-all-hours burger joint on St Georges Road – open since 1945, it proudly proclaims on its signage. I’ve been here a few times before, always at about this time, but on weekends, when I was drunk. It’s less busy now, but I’m surprised to see there are still quite a few people here. Two men, not seated together, both in jeans, only one is eating a burger. Behind the counter it’s all men working. I disassociate. Picture myself in this scene like it’s CCTV footage. A lone pregnant woman eats a burger at night. The man behind the counter has long black hair and is staring at me.
‘What can I get for you?’
‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘One veggie burger?’
‘No, sorry. I was just talking to myself.’
His face drains of tolerance. The large menu behind him is designed to look like a blackboard, with the menu items listed in cursive font. Dim sims are a dollar each.
‘I’ll have six dim sims. Steamed.’
‘Those are meat.’ He doesn’t ring up the sale.
‘I know.’ I feel tears prickling into existence.
He holds my gaze for another few seconds before he starts punching my order into the register.
I take a seat on a bar stool, and a man at the other end of the counter stands and leaves. He tosses a scrunched-up, dirty napkin on the table, takes slow steps out the door. ‘Bye,’ he calls out to the staff.
‘See ya, Bill,’ replies the man who served me. He catches me watching and I smile at him, but he turns and goes to the kitchen.
My dim sims arrive in one big bowl. A man in chef’s pants delivers them with a squeezy bottle of soy sauce. They taste exactly how I thought they would; they are exactly what I’ve been craving this entire time. Meat and salt and cabbage and a flavour that is familiar, but I don’t know from where or when. I eat one and then another and then another. I feel distinctly replenished, like a character in a computer game whose store of energy has been returned to full. I toy with feeling queasy or uneasy about it, but I don’t. I’ve been a vegetarian for eight years and for six of those I’ve known that the dairy industry is just as cruel and unsustainable as the meat industry. I’ve never been a vegan – not because I can’t live without cheese, but because I can’t stand the thought of having to be strong in the face of flak. People hate vegans.
Q: How do you know someone’s not a vegan?
&nb
sp; A: They’ll make a joke about one.
But, even though I understood the contradiction, I couldn’t go so far as to eat meat. I’d be too ashamed to confidently order a steak. Vegetarianism is a safe place where very little attention is drawn to you. Blending into the mass of people who care a little, but not so much they make others feel bad about their choices.
And, anyway, the midwife told me to go easy on myself.
Before leaving I order another three dim sims to take away and at home I sleep soundly, like a log, or a baby.
WHEN PHOEBE IS PREGNANT AND craving steaks, Joey becomes a vegetarian for those months so that no more animals are harmed than would have been otherwise. I imagine this as you and me. I don’t know if you were a vegetarian. I think maybe not. I imagine you saying, ‘The solution to climate change isn’t to stop eating meat.’ I picture the photo of you with Travis wearing the t-shirts with matching stripes, and I imagine the baby there, being held up by Travis, its body dangling below its ribcage. That blank, petrified stare that is somehow cute on children. How adorable it is that babies are flummoxed by the world. And you holding a burger, or a steak, so happy our baby is born so you can eat meat again.
MY FANTASIES OF you and me together are perfectly seen, like my real memories of you. They start just after the last time I saw you: the day you left my house and I was giddy with the feeling that everything was about to change. I’d thought I was about to fall in love, with you and with my life. I imagine us going on our first date the following weekend to the cute Italian bar in Thornbury. Or just to the pub in the afternoon for pints, and to the pasta bar on our second date. I imagine our conversations, long ones. I ask you all the things I don’t know about you. What is it exactly that you do? Why did you stop making furniture? How did you learn to do that? We laugh over ravioli. I like to imagine that I don’t find out I’m pregnant until after our second date, so we get two relaxed dates before we have to get an abortion. I go with Sarah, but you pay. I ask you for half the money, but you transfer me the entire amount. You send me flowers … no, you wouldn’t actually, but you’d be kind. Then we date. We go on a camping trip. We go to the border of Victoria and South Australia together and drive your parents’ Tarago between those big, rocky beaches I’ve only seen in photographs.
Small Joys of Real Life Page 9